If your definition of cult is any set of beliefs that anyone has ever promoted in bad/dishonest/non-rational ways, then every organization and set of beliefs with more than about two adherents is a cult.
That is consistent with my view. I find some much more culty than others, and some culty in much worse ways than others, but yeah, every cause is a cult and everyone should switch to egoism.
Sure, that’s why it’s useful to put numbers on how culty you think various institutions are. To throw out some completely random numbers, maybe Mormonism is a 9⁄10 while Rationalism is an 5⁄10. I’m not sure of the right way to scale the numbers, but it fits a model where Mormonism is much more culty than Rationalism which is much more culty than most of the scientific fields (the bottom of which is maths at 0⁄10).
Sure, that’s why it’s useful misleading to put numbers on how culty you think various institutions are.
FTFY. Otherwise you just get “You scored it 1/10! So it is a cult! You said so right there!” You’ve framed it that way by “counting down”, adding up points of cultishness along multiple dimensions. Everything will look like a cult by that standard. Nothing is allowed to count as a positive sign of not-a-cult; not-a-cult is not even a concept in this ontology. All groups are guilty until proven innocent. No group can be proven innocent, they just haven’t been found guilty yet. Just being a group is already worth a few points of cultishness, points that can never be removed.
Considering all groups to at least have an incipient potential of cult formation seems sensible?
It might not literally be a point of “cultishness” on a scale out of 10, but on a scale out of 100 that seems more sensible. It is true after all the risk can never be reduced to perfectly zero as long as the group exists.
Then “is a cult” is not a useful way of describing the question, under your view. You’ll want a quantitative (or at least ordinal) metric of cultishness, since almost nothing will be at either 0 or 100 percent. Otherwise this reduces to another “What exactly is a sandwich?” type discussion and we’re just trying to decide where along a continuum it makes sense to start or stop using the word in practice.
You know, like the recent 1-10 scoring ASX’s post on tight knit communities used.
If your definition of cult is any set of beliefs that anyone has ever promoted in bad/dishonest/non-rational ways, then every organization and set of beliefs with more than about two adherents is a cult.
That is consistent with my view. I find some much more culty than others, and some culty in much worse ways than others, but yeah, every cause is a cult and everyone should switch to egoism.
Then saying rationality is a cult is mostly just a game of semantics that says almost nothing about rationality in particular.
Sure, that’s why it’s useful to put numbers on how culty you think various institutions are. To throw out some
completely randomnumbers, maybe Mormonism is a 9⁄10 while Rationalism is an 5⁄10. I’m not sure of the right way to scale the numbers, but it fits a model where Mormonism is much more culty than Rationalism which is much more culty than most of the scientific fields (the bottom of which is maths at 0⁄10).FTFY. Otherwise you just get “You scored it 1/10! So it is a cult! You said so right there!” You’ve framed it that way by “counting down”, adding up points of cultishness along multiple dimensions. Everything will look like a cult by that standard. Nothing is allowed to count as a positive sign of not-a-cult; not-a-cult is not even a concept in this ontology. All groups are guilty until proven innocent. No group can be proven innocent, they just haven’t been found guilty yet. Just being a group is already worth a few points of cultishness, points that can never be removed.
Considering all groups to at least have an incipient potential of cult formation seems sensible?
It might not literally be a point of “cultishness” on a scale out of 10, but on a scale out of 100 that seems more sensible. It is true after all the risk can never be reduced to perfectly zero as long as the group exists.
I can’t think of any exceptions either…
About as sensible as considering all people to at least have an incipient potential of, oh, insert anything you like here.
“at least have an incipient potential of” means nothing.
Then “is a cult” is not a useful way of describing the question, under your view. You’ll want a quantitative (or at least ordinal) metric of cultishness, since almost nothing will be at either 0 or 100 percent. Otherwise this reduces to another “What exactly is a sandwich?” type discussion and we’re just trying to decide where along a continuum it makes sense to start or stop using the word in practice.
You know, like the recent 1-10 scoring ASX’s post on tight knit communities used.